The growing conflict between Israel’s secular majority and its increasingly powerful ultra-Orthodox religious minority was captured several years ago in a controversial television spot showing an encounter between a young ultra-Orthodox man and a model for Levi’s.

The ad, aired on Israel’s Channel Two television network, featured a group of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students in traditional garb, when the wind blew a man’s hat off.

He chases it down the street and finds himself at the feet of a provocatively dressed model wearing Levi’s jeans.

After she whispers in his ear, the two emerge from a store with the man wearing Levi’s and no skullcap.

The ad outraged Israel’s Orthodox community. Known in Hebrew as the Haredim (those who fear God), they separate themselves from much of modern life and do everything possible to prevent their young from being influenced by what they regard as a permissive world full of non-religious people.

But the controversy also reflected the uneasy disdain and growing contempt many secular Jews feel toward the increasingly powerful Haredim.

“The Haredim are an easy target,” said Gideon Levy, a Haaretz newspaper columnist.

“There is no greater consensus in secular Israeli society than hatred for them. Populist politicians build careers on spreading hatred of Haredim.”

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Cloistered in poor towns and neighbourhoods, exempt from conscription and surviving largely on government welfare, the black-hatted ultra-Orthodox make up about 9% of Israel’s population.

They frequently find themselves holding the balance of power in its fractured politics, a situation that vexes secular Israelis who complain the Haredim share the state’s resources without sharing its burdens.

Many ultra-Orthodox are equally sensitive to any state intervention, which they see as limiting their religious practice.

In recent years, the culture clash has intensified. This week, the city of Tel Aviv was up in arms over news of a sexually segregated concert scheduled for the municipally owned Mann Auditorium.

Ultra-Orthodox singer Yaniv Ben Mashiach was demanding the first-ever segregated concert in the theatre’s 53 year-history, insisting women sit in the balcony, while seats in the main theatre were reserved for men.

“It’s inconceivable that this humiliating, chauvinist and primitive practice will take place in a municipal concert hall in Tel Aviv,” Tamar Zandberg, a council member, wrote in a letter to the mayor.

“It’s a custom that has nothing to do with Jewish or religious life. It has sprung up suddenly in dark, fundamentalist circles and it has been growing ever wider.”

Last year, Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox families in the West Bank settlement of Immanuel refused to send their daughters to school with Sephardi girls from north Africa and the Middle East, on the grounds the Sephardi families were less strict in their religious observance.

Last month, almost 900 state-paid Haredi rabbis created a storm of controversy, when they signed a religious edict that prohibited ultra-Orthodox Jews from renting or selling land to non-Jews.

Israel’s political leaders, including the prime minister and president and several leading Haredi rabbis condemned the order, saying it would harm the reputations of Jews worldwide.

Yet within a matter of days, the wives of 30 Haredi rabbis published a similar letter, calling on Jewish girls not to date Arabs, work with them or perform national service in the same places where Arabs work.

“Your grandmothers never dreamed or prayed that one of their descendants would commit an act that would remove future generations of her family from the Jewish people,” the letter said.

“Israeli society is falling into a deep, dark pit of racism and xenophobia,” said Rabbi Gilad Kariv, head of Israel’s Reform Judaism Movement.

But more than anything, it is simple demographics that frightens most secular Jews in Israel.

About half of ultra-Orthodox adults do not work and nearly 60% of the men are full-time Torah students who receive government stipends.

But with a birth rate that far exceeds the national average, their numbers are expected double over the next 15 years.

Since their schools, which focus on religion, refuse to teach core subjects such as mathematics, science or English, economists fear the Haredim could soon become a drag on the economy.

Government studies show already 56% live below the poverty line and make up 20% of the country’s poor.

Some economists believe in the long run, the growth of the Haredim could create an “existential danger,” since the proportion of Israelis who contribute most to the economy and military is shrinking.

“It is past time for the state of Israel to wake up and refocus its priorities — to give social and economic issues at least the same weight that national security issues receive,” said Dan Ben-David, a Tel Aviv University macro-economist.